Paris – The Socialist Party took control of Paris in 2001, after 130 years of right-wing dominance, but now the controversial 12-year legacy of Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo has fuelled bids for a change of direction. We look at the six main contenders in the upcoming municipal elections and the issues they're campaigning on.
Paris has around 2.1 million inhabitants and some 1.4 million of them are registered to vote in France’s local elections on 15 and 22 March.
Winning Paris is a big prize – and carries hefty responsibilities. The mayor is head of the 163-seat Paris city council with a budget of €10.5 billion, controlling key areas such as housing, transport, waste, early childhood, culture, sports and green spaces across some 105 km².
For the first time in Paris, as in Marseille and Lyon, voters will cast two ballots simultaneously, with one list for district councils and another list citywide for the 163-seat Paris Council.
The six key contenders include well-known political figures Rachida Dati (conservative Republican), Sophia Chikirou (far-left France Unbowed) and Sarah Knafo (nationalist Reconquest). The other three – Emmanuel Grégoire (Socialist Party), Pierre-Yves Bournazel (centre-right Horizons) and Thierry Mariani (far-right National Rally) – are less well known nationwide.
All six are campaigning to varying degrees on the issues of security, housing, the environment and cleaning up the capital.
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Socialist Party: Emmanuel Grégoire
Anne Hidalgo, mayor since 2013, is not running for a third term – and while she had picked her successor, naming Rémi Feraud as her choice, the Socialist Party (PS) instead backed her former deputy, Emmanuel Grégoire.
He and Hidalgo are not on good terms, which may weigh in his favour since the incumbent leaves behind a mixed legacy.
While her environmental record – 500km of cycle lanes and a 44 percent reduction in traffic-related air pollution – has won her acclaim in some quarters, restrictions on car usage in the city centre and reduced speed limits have seen her gain enemies on the right and among some Parisians.
The right also accuses her of running the city deep into debt during her years in office – from €4.18 billion in 2014 to €9.7bn by the end of 2026.
Grégoire is also backed by the Greens (EELV) and the French Communist Party (PCF). Polls currently put him in the lead, ahead of his main rival Rachida Dati.
His manifesto Aimer Paris ("Love Paris") includes an increase in affordable housing, extending bike and pedestrian plans, free school meals for all pupils under 18, and more green areas.
Unlike centrist and right-wing candidates, he opposes lethal weapons for municipal police officers, although he favours increasing the 2,300-strong force by around 1,000.
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France Unbowed: Sophia Chikirou
Chikirou is standing for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left France Unbowed (LFI).
During the country's 2024 legislative elections, LFI joined forces with the PS as part of the New Popular Front to counter the far right. But for the municipals they are fielding their own candidate, with a far more radical programme under the banner Le Nouveau Paris Populaire ("The new people's Paris").
Chikirou says she wants to enable more working-class people to live in the city, through massive expansion of social housing, acquiring 5,000 properties by 2032, and banning professional short-term tourist rentals and lowering rent caps to force the private market to make rents more affordable.
The party also aims to boost support for migrant rights, and wants to defund the police in order to increase social spending.
Like Grégoire, Chikirou opposes arming the municipal police force and is the only one of the six candidates to have raised the issue of police violence in her campaign.
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Republicans: Rachida Dati
Rachida Dati is a veteran French politician, who worked as justice minister under Nicolas Sarkozy. She recently stepped down as culture minister in Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s government to focus on her campaign to become mayor.
Famed for her straight talking style, this is her second attempt to run for mayor.
Her social media-driven campaign has reportedly been inspired by New York mayor Zohran Mamdani. A video of Dati joining the bin men of Paris on their morning rounds drew close to 3 million views on TikTok.
Her programme focuses on security, notably the recruitment and arming of 5,000 municipal police officers – double the current number – and doubling the number of CCTV cameras in the city to 8,000.
She says she would also change the criteria for social housing to favour local workers, cut debt and fully privatise refuse collection.
Dati faces charges of corruption and influence peddling and if found guilty in the trial, set for September, could be disqualified from public office.
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Horizons: Pierre-Yves Bournazel
Although Dati served in Lecornu’s government, President Macron’s Renaissance group has chosen to back centrist Pierre-Yves Bournazel.
Bournazel, from the centre-right Horizons group, was Dati's spokesperson when she was minister of justice. The two did not get on: in his recently published book La Bataille pour Paris ("The Battle for Paris") he described her as “a person in a state of narcissistic intoxication”.
He's running under the slogan Paris Apaisé ("Paris at peace"), aiming to improve quality of life without tax increases in a bid to bridge the divide between right and left without resorting to "extremes".
He plans to half the capital's debt, boost police numbers, privatise street cleaning, encourage the rental market via tax breaks and cap Airbnb rentals at 30 days per year rather than the current 90 days.
He would provide 100 percent free school canteens for low-income families and free underground parking for locals.
Bournazel was recently the subject of an online disinformation campaign, blamed on Russia, which claimed he would hand over the Pompidou arts centre to migrants if elected.
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Reconquest: Sarah Knafo
Sarah Knafo is the political and romantic partner of former far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour and vice president of his nationalist Reconquest party.
Her slogan is Paris, Ville Heureuse ("Paris, Happy City"). Running on an ultra-liberal, anti-immigration platform centred around security, she advocates a "French first" policy on jobs and housing, and reinforcing secularism.
She plans to save €10bn via 3,500 job cuts, privatising refuse and roads and selling off 10 percent of the city's social housing.
She would scrap Hidalgo's rent control scheme altogether, restore the 80km/h speed limit on the Paris ring road and reopen riverside expressways to cars once more.
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National Rally: Thierry Mariani
Thierry Mariani, the National Rally (RN) candidate, is campaigning under the slogan Retrouvons Paris ("Let's reclaim Paris"). He promises more law and order, fiscal restraint, anti-immigration measures, an end to what he calls "woke" policies and to protect "Parisian identity".
Like Knafo he would expand the municipal police, scrap rent control and sell off existing social housing stock to tenants.
The RN is focusing on winning seats on the Paris Council, whose councillors will then help elect senators in September, rather than winning the mayoral office.
Mariani is pro-Russia and has made regular appearances on Russian military television, in contrast to the official party line which views the war in Ukraine as an illegal war of aggression.
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Paris has traditionally held out against the rise of the far right. RN candidates won just 1.47 percent of the vote in the first round of the 2020 municipal elections, and hold no seats on the Paris Council.
A recent survey by Elabe and Ifop on voting intentions for the first round gave Mariani just 3 percent. It put Grégoire in front with 32 percent, Dati on 26.5 percent, Knafo on 13.5 percent, Bournazel on 12 percent and Chikirou on 10.5 percent.
